Open Letter to PM Pierre

Please, accept my apologies for this unsolicited note. I could not resist the temptation to write after listening to the debate in the House of Assembly this week on the Public Finance Management Act.

You presented a catalogue of Direct Award Contracts (DACs) or Single Tender Actions that were dished-out by the last government. I am hoping, against hope, that you were wrong and that the UWP administration was not as reckless and incompetent with public finance, or as corrupt as it appeared to be. However, if that were the case, then it ought to be a source grave concern for all moral and fairminded Saint Lucians. However, what worries me the most is not what happened in the past, but where do we go from there and, crucially, what can and will your administration do to prevent it from happening under your watch and to stop it from happening in the future. Remember, “Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past”, George Orwell.

Prime Minister, if you “smell a rat”, you do not simply deodorise the room by spraying away the awful smell. You must find the decaying rat, wherever it is, and dispose of it completely to get rid of the stench permanently. As Martin Luther King Jr said, “The best way to solve any problem is to remove its cause”.

It is not enough to simply go after the former Prime Ministers and his cohorts, through investigations or otherwise. Indeed, that is neither necessary nor desirable, however, politically expedient it might seem—it would be seen as political witch-hunting, which will achieve little or nothing. The stench of corruption in all those “direct award” contracts is overpowering but, regrettably, there is nothing unlawful or illegal about the application of the direct award process, unless some rule was broken.

Martin Luther King Jr again, “Never forget that everything that Hitler did in Germany was legal”. In other words, many immoral acts are committed with the complete blessing of the LAW. The amounts involved and the frequency with which the DAC procedure was used was patently improper and immoral, but you will struggle to pin illegality or misconduct on the perpetrators. So, do not waste time and more tax-payers money on investigations or suchlike.

I also believe that much of what took place in the House yesterday was political theatre. Should the people of Saint Lucia know about the apparent reckless and corrupt waste of public funds by the last administration? Absolutely! But this could and should have been done differently—either by a carefully structured address to the nation on the state of finances of the nation that you inherited from the last government, why and what it means for the state of affairs going forward, or alternatively through the publication of a white paper on same. The kind of theatrics that was on display in the House yesterday will do nothing to enhance public confidence in politicians and politics.

On the more specific and vital issue of public finance management, I believe the ONLY way to get rid of the metaphorical stinking rat is to:

a) Establish, through statute, water-tight conditions under which direct award of public contracts are permitted, e.g., who must recommend, value limit, completion timeframe (emergency criteria), etc.

b) Otherwise, all public contracts should go through a well-managed and documented tender procedure and process.

c) The misuse of public funds, corruption and cronyism are not limited to government ministers. Indeed, a government minister simply cannot be corrupt without the connivance and support of the other public servants. Corruption is much more than theft of public resources. It deprives government and the country of significant tax revenue from business entities and persons because of connection with corrupt public officials. It is any unlawful or improper behaviour that seeks to gain an advantage through illegitimate means. It is dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power or authority, typically involving bribery or offering, giving, or receiving of anything of value with the intention of inducing a person to act or to reward a person for having acted.

In order to address this endemic malaise properly, if not definitively, your administration must strengthen the Integrity Commission, through statute, by giving it real independence, power to subpoena and question public officers, with teeth to oversee and scrutinize integrity and probity in the public service and more importantly to have the power to indict or prosecute anyone where there is evidence of an indictable offence. The membership should comprise of independent-minded, free-thinking individuals who are not necessarily politically aligned. It must not only avoid cronyism, but it must also be seen to do so.

d) Establish a Whistle-blowers Act as part of a comprehensive fight against corruption. This is necessary not simply to encourage whistleblowing but to protect from victimization, those who have the courage to report corruption. It is an indispensable tool in the battle against corruption.

The Austrian writer and journalist, Karl Kraus, said, “Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country”. Any government that ignores the pervasive impact of corruption on the society is as culpable as the ones who perpetrate it. Martin Luther King Jr once again, “To ignore evil is to become accomplice to it”.

I leave you with this sobering thought from the American writer and political activist, Eldridge Cleaver, “There is no more neutrality in the world. You either have to be part of the solution, or you’re going to be part of the problem”. In this case, the problem is corruption in public life.

Yours sincerely

Bernard Cornibert